WTF?

[muninnhuginn]

So I wanders off this afternoon to deal with things parental and come back to find my screen full of beautiful pictures of contented babies doing what comes naturally. Wow.

And the reason? Double wow.

And nope, I cannot see how there is anything obscene about images of breastfeeding... at all. Nipples 'n' all. But I can't find one of me and Looby Loo "at it" so the new icon's courtesy of cangetmad to whom many thanks. It's a gorgeous image.

I wasn't breastfed. I suspect I may have had better health if I had been and I think it was a matter of my mother's health post delivery that meant she didn't. My younger brother was. I did breastfeed. For just over twelve months. It was bliss. I'm certain it helped support Looby Loo's health and growth. It changed my attitude to my body and my internal view of myself--entirely for the better. It's not something to be hidden from view--except if an individual woman is happier to be private whilst feeding her child: her baby, her breast, her choice--well not unless we ban all images of anyone at all eating in public.

Comments

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

if you feel incapable of repressing/ignoring [something], the polite thing to do would be to unobtrusively get up and leave the room, rather than make everyone else share your [response to it].

My point exactly. The difference between our opinions is that to you it should be my responsibility to make sure I'm not offended by your behaviour, whereas to me, your behaviour can only be your responsibility. And given that we live in a country where people get arrested for streaking, threatening behaviour, public affray and so on, it rather looks as though the rest of society takes the same view as me.

if we're assuming party guests so immature they can't deal with a woman breastfeeding OMG IN FRONT OF THEM, they are obviously not grown-up enough to amuse themselves for ten minutes

I refer you to my other comment above (http://muninnhuginn.livejournal.com/317509.html?thread=391493#t391493). I really don't know what you think insulting people who disagree with you is going to achieve; attempting to create social change through browbeating everyone else until they're too scared to disagree is more commonly known as terrorism.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

The difference between our opinions is that to you it
should be my responsibility to make sure I'm not offended by your
behaviour, whereas to me, your behaviour can only be your responsibility.

Let's try again, shall we? I don't like cigarette smoke. But, where it's legal to smoke, I put up with it. If I am at a party, and people are (with the consent of the host) smoking tobacco, and it's an enjoyable party otherwise, I do not insist that the smokers go lock themselves in the loo. Before the advent of the smoking ban in pubs, if I was in a pub and people were smoking, I did not demand that they lock themselves in a toilet cubicle where no one actually had to see them. It was legal for them to smoke: they were smoking: my reaction to their behaviour was my responsibility. You would appear to feel that, if you're made uncomfortable by people smoking where it is legal for them to smoke, it's their responsibility to change their behaviour, rather than yours to remove yourself from their vicinity.

The difference between smoking and breastfeeding is that one cannot stop breathing around a smoker, whereas one can quite easily just avert one's eyes from an infant feeding at her mother's breast.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

If I am at a party, and people are (with the consent of the host) smoking tobacco, and it's an enjoyable party otherwise, I do not insist that the smokers go lock themselves in the loo.

If I am at a party, and numerous people are with the consent of the host breastfeeding their babies, I very probably don't go to the next party that person throws because they obviously have a set of norms I'm not comfortable with. In much the same way that I'd politely decline invitations to attend, say, sex parties or BDSM play parties, and have already declined to carry on going to parties at which guests were wont to wander about stark naked and chat me up entirely because of my footwear (though just as a data point I'd have reacted the same way if I got stuck at a party full of men who were talking to my tits). And should I invite this person to one of my own parties, I warn them in advance that I prefer babies to be fed in private, as do my friends.

I also find it quite interesting that the example you picked is smoking, which has pretty much just been made illegal in public throughout the UK. Public nudity already is illegal.

You would appear to feel that, if you're made uncomfortable by people smoking where it is legal for them to smoke, it's their responsibility to change their behaviour, rather than yours to remove yourself from their vicinity

I don't equate smoking to breastfeeding, for starters.

As to smoking: I believe that the damage done by socialising for a few hours in a smoky atmosphere is far less than the damage done by smoking oneself, and since I'm also the lead singer of a rock band, to a great extent I've had to learn to put up with smoky atmospheres since a lot of rock fans smoke. However, I have a friend who suffers from severe asthma, and she's not capable of putting up with smoke because it makes her instantly ill.

Breastfeeding, however, is not an issue of the rate at which one does or does not absorb toxins which in large quantities have a long-term effect on the body. It's an issue of psychological and social boundaries, and the mind works rather differently to the body. As soon as one notices someone breastfeeding and feels disturbed by it, the damage is done; and I don't know about you, but I can't call up amnesia to order. Whether or not you're looking at it you still know it's going on: we have far less choice about our instantaneous emotional responses to given stimuli than we do about how long we stay in a physically inhospitable environment. Your attitude is all very well as long as you're fundamentally not actually all that bothered by breastfeeding, but it does absolutely nothing to ease the problem for people who find it strongly distasteful - and those people are, given the current state of law and public opinion in this country, in the majority. Imagine for a moment that I'm trying to persuade you that public wife-beating is fine, and that if it upsets you all you need to do is look away; do you take my point about seeing and knowing being two different things?

Putting it another way, here's something interesting about society: that universally human sense of "ugh, put it away" is, fundamentally, the foundation on which all law and social convention relating to obscenity and the private/public divide is ultimately based. Further, as I understand human nature these responses are learnt very early and do not change particularly easily or fast. So I think it's ridiculous to expect that militantly demanding that everyone stop being squicked by public breastfeeding right now will actually achieve anything other than irritating the very people you most need to reach.

There are things about the world that all of us find it hard to live with - I for example detest the sexism I constantly find in employment situations - but there is only so much we can do to genuinely create change, and beyond those limitations we just have to live with the world the way it is now. I'm leaving full time office work to live on next to no money doing something that doesn't drive me insane, for example. Count your blessings, and if you want progress look at how far society has already come: thirty years ago, there were no such things as family-friendly pubs.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

As soon as one notices someone breastfeeding and feels disturbed by it, the damage is done; and I don't know about you, but I can't call up amnesia to order.

Nope, but let's be clear about it: you have a specialised reaction to seeing a baby breastfeeding. Just as some people react badly to seeing two men kissing (who have no objection to seeing a man and a woman kissing). You have, it appears, a mild phobia about it. It's your phobia. It's your problem. It not the problem of people around you, breastfeeding or not, to help you out: you're an adult, you need to manage your own phobias without, as far as possible, disturbing other people.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

You have, it appears, a mild phobia about it

No, I don't.

What I have is the balls to say out loud what everyone else is thinking: the person who complained about the userpic and prompted this whole post, the people who complained to the police about someone breastfeeding in Norwich city centre and made the regional news a few months back, the vast number of people who think it's deeply unpleasant but are far too polite to mention it. Or indeed too cowed by the rabid feminist rhetoric the practise seems to inspire in its supporters.

The history of my life is that I am the person who says what nobody else will, and I don't think this is any different. I'd have said it's the militant breastfeeders who have an issue, in that they appear to be expecting the whole world to change itself to suit them as opposed to working within the constraints of normality and thoughtfully managing their impact on other people.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

No, I don't.

Your description of your reaction to seeing a woman breastfeed an infant sounded like a phobia to me. We even have a word for it now: tuptotrephophobic.

I'd have said it's the militant breastfeeders who have an issue, in that they appear to be expecting the whole world to change itself to suit them as opposed to working within the constraints of normality and thoughtfully managing their impact on other people.

If you've got from somewhere the notion that breastfeeding is not normal, you really need to do some reading about basic biological functions. Tuptotrephophobia is not normal. Yet you are opposed to working within the constraints of normality - that babies have to eat, that the best food for them is breastmilk - to thoughtfully manage the impact of your tuptotrephophobia on other people. Too bad.

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[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, of course. Now that we live in a world where we understand psychology, we can automatically classify any emotional response we don't like as a phobia.

Has it ever occurred to you that the standards any given society imposes as normal *are* phobias, they're just the ones people have chosen to enshrine as justified?

For example, we think nothing of women wandering around in cropped tops and extremely short shorts and men in shorts and no shirt these days - both modes of dress which would have given the Victorians a collective heart attack and likely caused the poor souls in question to be arrested, particularly the woman.

The fact that I'm self-aware enough and articulate enough to describe the impact of my reaction to seeing public breastfeeding clearly doesn't say anything about whether or not that reaction is normal. In fact, I know you're bullshitting me, because I have personal experience of phobias both mild and severe, and this is nothing like them. Mental illness is socially defined: a phobia is an emotional response which causes an extreme and unusual level of distress, such that it affects your ability to function as a normal member of society. What you've chosen to overlook is that I'm perfectly capable of disgustedly ignoring breastfeeders if I choose to; I just don't think it's reasonable for me to be expected to do that. I accept that I live in a society which considers the female breast to be obscene, and I believe that in that situation it is neither sane nor acceptable to feed a baby whenever and wherever you please. And I also believe that people who choose to ignore that are hampering the progress of change in Western society's attitude to women and sexuality.

I was talking to a friend of mine who's several months pregnant last night, who told me that a number of other mothers she knows have had people come up to them while breastfeeding in public and tell them to their faces that they think it's disgusting. Does that sound like confirmation that I'm a lone, abnormal phobic to you? I never said Western society doesn't have a barking mad attitude to women and motherhood, because it's blindingly obvious in so many ways that it does - what I said was that I think screaming militancy is one of the least sane ways of responding to that I can imagine.

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[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I was talking to a friend of mine who's several months pregnant last night, who told me that a number of other mothers she knows have had people come up to them while breastfeeding in public and tell them to their faces that they think it's disgusting. Does that sound like confirmation that I'm a lone, abnormal phobic to you?

No: it sounds like you have the kind of social support that - for example - homophobes get. I have had people come up to me in public and tell me to my face that they think my sexual orientation is disgusting. They're confident that their phobia about queerness is justifiable and righteous, and that the appropriate solution to their phobia is not for them to suppress it politely but for me to go into the closet. I disagree, though evidently you would feel differently.

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[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Actually, my friend is a very bright woman who completely disagreed with me.

For context, I'm also bisexual.

You're really not interested in accepting that my point of view might in any way have value, are you?

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[yonmei.livejournal.com]

For context, I'm also bisexual.

And yet you're in favour of being closety around homophobes because they'll get offended and social support is on their side? You think it's up to LGB people to avoid offending homophobes? Or does this avoidance strategy you advocate only apply to breastfeeding mothers?

You're really not interested in accepting that my point of view might in any way have value, are you?

Since your POV appears to be that other people should strive not to offend you, but that you have a right to offend anyone... well. No, can't say I do think that POV has any value.

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[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

And yet you're in favour of being closety around homophobes because they'll get offended and social support is on their side? You think it's up to LGB people to avoid offending homophobes?

I think you're comparing apples and oranges again. In terms of social norms versus aberrant phobias, homophobia is moving more and more clearly now into the phobia camp for most of society. It's no longer legally sanctioned, for example. Breastfeeding, equally obviously, isn't by any means so clear-cut. You think it should be entirely acceptable; I think that whether or not it should be acceptable is immaterial, because it self-evidently isn't and for the foreseeable future is never going to be. And in that atmosphere of deeply grey areas, I think it's by far wisest to put the politics on the back burner and do what you can to avoid constant stress and confrontation. Particularly if you've got a baby's wellbeing to think about.

you have a right to offend anyone

No, I don't have a right to offend. I do, however, have a right to express my opinions without being insulted, accused of deviance and assumed to be a bigot.

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[yonmei.livejournal.com]

No, I don't have a right to offend. I do, however, have a right to express my opinions without being insulted, accused of deviance and assumed to be a bigot.

Heh. Sure, you have the right to express your opinions. But, to quote your own advice back to you, "in that atmosphere of deeply grey areas, I think it's by far wisest to put the politics on the back burner and do what you can to avoid constant stress and confrontation." In short, if you feel that the important thing is to avoid constant stress and confrontation, you shouldn't go around expressing your opinions.

But if you do, and you know your opinions are broadly offensive, you shouldn't then complain that you have been identified as the kind of person your expressed opinions suggest that you are - phobic about breastfeeding, unwilling to be adult about your phobia and manage it courteously without disrupting others, and with a sense of entitlement so high it's breathtaking.

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[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

the kind of person your expressed opinions suggest that you are

I wouldn't make assumptions like that, if I were you. I fool a *lot* of people online, and I've already found holes in your assumptions about me once today.

I'm also fascinated by the way that every time it becomes clear that in terms of facts you can't argue me down, you come up with some social sin or other I'm committing. Thus far, we've had denial, which is very amusing since I happen to be well aware that denial is the last problem I have; we've had bigotry, the eternal catch-all; and now, since you have nothing more concrete to go on than the fact I won't back down and stop disagreeing, you decide I have a "sense of entitlement". As far as I can tell, that's simply feminist jargon for "confidence in opinions I don't agree with".

But there again I don't think this is about my opinions at all, I think it's about the fact I don't have the grace to feel hunted and oppressed. I can't possibly be right to be happy with the status quo because it's so hideously unjust: yet you haven't been able to force me to see my terrible insensitivity and acknowledge the error of my ways. I must be driving you nuts.

However, it strikes me that nobody else has jumped into this conversation to fight your side against me. If my opinions really were "broadly offensive", experience tells me they would have done exactly that: this is the internet, after all. The fact that they haven't makes it look rather as though it's you personally, rather than the whole world, who is offended.

To me, along with the right to freedom of expression comes the responsibility of dealing with the fact you won't always like other people's opinions or the way they express them. The only thing I'm "entitled" to is a fair hearing - but that's precisely what you're either unable or unwilling to give me. For a whole constellation of reasons I'm damned if I'll lie about the fact I find your opinions distasteful, but I'm more than happy to debate them anyway; you, as far as I can tell, will neither answer my arguments rationally nor back up your own with anything other than political rhetoric and personal insults. Now charitably I could interpret this as a simple communication problem, but I'm much more inclined to think that you're one of those people who just doesn't deal well with my forthright manner; you don't seem to have a great deal of ability to separate the content from the form. And quite honestly, while I'm well aware that arguing with me is a challenge and I don't expect everyone to cope (you're doing pretty well, by the way), it's also true that if you can't debate sensibly with people unless they're being gentle with you, you're not likely to get very far in proselytising a cause. I just don't think the world is ever going to be a lovely safe playground in which nobody ever has to cope with hard stuff, so I don't see any reason to laboriously make myself unthreatening just because some people find it a chore dealing with me as I am. Everyone's got to learn to cope with the rough stuff somehow, and some of them will learn a little by tangling with me; that, thanks to the marvellous sense of humour of the Fates, appears to be my gift in life.

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[muninnhuginn]

However, it strikes me that nobody else has jumped into this conversation

Nah, watching's more fun ;-)

Nope, actually I'm a slow reader and had a pile of stuff to get through without distractions.

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[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Hm. So as opposed to providing anything remotely resembling an interesting counterpoint in an debate which might if I'm lucky prove educational to the person I'm arguing with even if they do wind up loathing me for being too bloody clever by half, I'm just the LJ equivalent of Big Brother.

*sigh* I'll go back to my novel outlines. I've said everything I want to say anyway.

The thing that interests me is that before this conversation started, I had no problem with that userpic of yours at all. Now, I can't stand the sight of it; I've had to take your journal off my default view.

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[muninnhuginn]

I'm just the LJ equivalent of Big Brother

Don't put yourself down: you're far more intelligent :-)

Since the argument's happening in my space, I think I can choose to participate or just watch on as I please.

I've had to take your journal off my default view.

Argh! Banished to the darkest reaches! (The sun's just come out: always brings me out in flippancy.)

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[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I fool a *lot* of people online, and I've already found holes in your assumptions about me once today.

So, all the offensive comments you've been making about how awful it is to see women breastfeeding and how it's their responsibility to go into the closet so that people like you won't be offended... all of that is just you fooling people online?

Sorry I wasted time talking to you, then: people who strike appalling attitudes for the sake of causing dissent just for the sake of "fooling people online" just annoy me.

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[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

people who strike appalling attitudes for the sake of causing dissent just for the sake of "fooling people online" just annoy me

No, I'm not a troll. I'm not playing devil's advocate: I'm arguing for what I believe. And insofar as that constitutes deliberately making comments which offend you personally, then yes, I am doing it: because I happen to be in an excellent position to present you with something you obviously haven't considered before, namely the fact that there are people out there who disagree with you completely and are also rational, well-adjusted, intelligent adults as opposed to bigoted morons. The fact that it's winding you up - well, I can't deny I find that funny, but not out of sadism: it demonstrates that you really can't cope with the existence of well-thought-out opinions that oppose yours, and the humour lies in the fact that in spite of that you also appear to be wanting to go about persuading other people you're right. You just can't do that simply by informing them they're wrong; if you want to get people who totally disagree with you to take up your beliefs, first you have to be able to stretch your mind round their beliefs enough to find a pathway between the two.

And that really is the last I'm saying in this argument: there are other things I should be doing.

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[yonmei.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not a troll. I'm not playing devil's advocate: I'm arguing for
what I believe.

And you believe that people shouldn't be allowed to offend your sensibilities by breastfeeding where you can see them because you have a phobia about it.

Further, you believe you should be allowed to be as offensive as you like in defense of that belief.

And finally, you get very defensive and twitchy and pissy when you are offended.

It all adds up to a really whopping, toddler-sized sense of entitlement. Suggest you lose it.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Yet you are opposed to working within the constraints of normality - that babies have to eat, that the best food for them is breastmilk

So what's wrong with breast pumps? If the answer is 'everything', stop bitching about how vicitmised you are and invent one that more usefully mimics the action of a baby. (And don't you dare pretend you're stubborn and immature enough to say 'why not use a baby'. If you want me to take you seriously as a set of opinions, you can damn well debate in a sensible manner). What's wrong with acknowledging that once you've made the choice to be a mother in this society, your life is going to change in big and important ways, and one of those ways might be that you don't get to go wherever you please whenever you please and do whatever you feel like while you're there? What is wrong with accepting that life as a mother will not be the same as life as an independent adult? Where's the refusal to live within constraints? In my understanding that motherhood in this society imposes constraints or your refusal to deal with the fact they exist?

Frankly I think Western women are far too close to actually swallowing the quite ridiculous belief that we can have the lifestyle of an independent adult as well as the pleasures of motherhood. It's nothing but egotism: I want to be able to go where I want and do what I want, so everyone else is obviously just wrong and out to get me. Making us reject the reality of our own femininity like this is the crowning achievement of a society which tries to turn us all into egotists: a nation of self-important idiots who believe that we should want everything, right this minute, and who refuse like so many million temperamental two-year-olds to believe for a second that there are some things we just do not get to do. And before you accuse me of being a 1950s Tory out to return women to subservience, think for just a minute about the fact that in "less advanced" cultures, after birth women are traditionally given a period of 'lying in' for up to forty days after the birth; where did that go for us? We threw it away our own damn selves, that's where - Western mothers are too busy going back to aerobics and pilates, going out to posh restaurants for Lunch With Friends, anticipating getting back to their careers, desperate to climb back on the endless treadmill of illusory status and achievement. We expect to have it all, the kids and the lifestyle, and we whine like adolescents when that turns out to make life difficult. No, it's not funny to realise that if you choose to be a mother in this culture you're putting yourself in an impossible situation because you can't be what the West describes as a woman at the same time: but understanding that doesn't mean it's going to change tomorrow, and just because you're in an unpleasant situation now doesn't mean you have the right to behave like a complete idiot about it.

I'm getting very sick of a discussion with someone who would rather accuse me of deviance than open-mindedly examine my point of view, but I'm going to say for one last time that changes in attitudes like this happen slowly and over time, not as the direct result of militancy and conflict. Go and read up on the development of law relating to sex, obscenity, abortion and so forth over the last 150 years - the gradual alteration of State's general right to intervene in private morality for the greater good of society. I recommend 'The Rules of Desire' by Cate Haste. Think about what you read, and get a bit of a feel for exactly how much resistance there is to social change when the subject is one of the most basic and emotive of life's issues. And then take another look at your own behaviour, and ask yourself whether you really are using your energy in the right way for the situation as it stands now.

[muninnhuginn]

So what's wrong with breast pumps?

Try one. They're just not right for some folk.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

"So what's wrong with breast pumps?"

I'm really kind of speechless at the sense of entitlement these six words convey.